


play me like a violin

by narcissablaxk



Series: Now or Never [7]
Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series), Karate Kid (Movies)
Genre: 90s, Feelings Realization, First Kiss, Grunge!Johnny, High School Reunion, M/M, lawrusso, og cobras
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25191958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narcissablaxk/pseuds/narcissablaxk
Summary: And we both hope there's something, but we both keep fronting, and it's a closed discussion. And I'm thinking damn if these walls could talk.It's hard to attend a high school reunion when your only friend is your ex-girlfriend and your nemesis is looking like he suddenly listens to Nirvana and it's not a bad look, after all.Or Johnny and Daniel realize that high school reunions are only as good as your own private reunions.
Relationships: Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence
Series: Now or Never [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1772686
Comments: 9
Kudos: 203





	play me like a violin

West Valley High School had gotten only the most marginal of face-lifts since the last time Johnny had set foot in it. The peeling white paint at the junction where the wall met the ceiling had been redone, but everything else was staggeringly the same. The little foyer at the front of the school still smelled weirdly like new furniture, the trophy case still had that picture of Ali in it – it was like he had never left. 

Except, of course, that he had left, and had made considerable effort to never come back. He had promised himself, in the tumultuous first year after he graduated high school, that he would never stoop so low as to go back to his alma mater for his high school reunion. The only people who showed up to those charades were the chumps who peaked in high school. 

Yet here he was, standing in the gym that had housed his senior prom, trying not to smell the scent of old socks and deteriorating linoleum, his eyes shifting quickly through the crowd of people. He didn’t want to linger on any of them too long, lest he recognize them. 

That was the point, Bobby had said on the phone. Reconnect with the people you knew back then. It’ll do you good. 

Except Bobby was going to be late, and he was the one who had contacted the rest of the old gang. Johnny wasn’t particularly proud to admit how he had walked away from his friends when high school ended. Perhaps part of it was the All Valley Tournament, and what happened after that, but he was also terrible with change. He despised and resented change for taking things from him, so before it had even tried, he had gone into the Air Force, leaving a polite word for Bobby and for no one else. 

But that was ten years ago, and he had only lasted his initial four years in the Air Force anyway. Still, four years was more than enough time for him to grow differently, sprout roots far away from Sid and his influence, even farther from Kreese. 

He never bothered to try to get back in touch with anyone when he came back. It felt like going off to New York to become an actor and then coming home after one rejection. And at his core, Johnny was proud. Well, evidently he wasn’t so proud that he refused to come to this, he thought, staring up at the crepe streamers that hung from the basketball hoop with no net. 

He found the bartender at a little cart at the back of the room, far enough from the music that people could hear each other talk. He ordered himself a beer and stayed back there, as if he and the bartender were friends, but they weren’t, and the bartender was far too busy flirting with chicks Johnny remembered from his sophomore trigonometry class. 

He suddenly had the feeling that he was being watched; he sipped his beer, using the motion of the bottle to disguise his own sweep of the crowd. He caught sight of a man with a familiar bearing at the edge of the crowd, shoulders angled toward him. 

Was that –?

“Johnny,” Bobby’s hand landed on his shoulder, just hard enough that Johnny jumped, almost spilling his beer on himself. “Whoa, relax.” 

And then the man who was watching him was coming toward them, a bright grin on his face, and Johnny recognized him, so suddenly he was surprised he hadn’t recognized him instantly. 

“Dutch,” Bobby said, pulling the other man into a hug. “Where’s Jimmy and Tommy?” 

Dutch was saying something, his eyes on Johnny, but someone at the bar leaned against the counter in a familiar way and Johnny found himself distracted again. Before he could even bother to spare Dutch a hello, he was looking into the eyes of his past, still as beautiful as ever. 

“Ali,” Dutch said, following Johnny’s eyes. “Heard she went to medical school.” 

“What?” Johnny turned back to his friends, Bobby’s eyes on him vaguely disapproving. He didn’t wait for an answer, but opened his arms for Dutch, pulling him into a sturdy, sincere hug. “It’s good to see you,” he said. “Both of you.” 

It was small talk, or something reminiscent of it, for a while. Bobby had gone to a private Christian school after high school, Dutch hadn’t gone to college at all. Jimmy, when he did arrive, was wearing khakis, of all things, and Bobby had to mutter into Johnny’s ear that he was an accountant now. 

Tommy, apparently, wasn’t coming. He was in San Francisco, Jimmy said, with his wife and children. 

A wife and children. Johnny wanted to laugh, but he wasn’t sure what about that he found funny. Maybe it was that he was the only one married with kids; maybe it was because he wasn’t. 

“What about you, Johnny?” Bobby asked. “I know you’ve been working for my dad –”

Johnny waved him off. He didn’t want to talk about his job with Bobby’s dad. Not that he resented it, really, but next to Bobby, the pastor, and Jimmy, the accountant, working as a handyman wasn’t exactly glamorous. 

He was beginning to remember why people didn’t like to come to these things. 

“But before that,” Bobby continued, unrelenting. “You just took off after senior year.” 

He was looking at Johnny the same way he used to when they were in high school. He knew where Johnny had been, he just wanted him to tell everyone else. What purpose would that serve, exactly? Yet another thing he’d managed to screw up in only one decade? 

“I was in the Air Force,” he muttered, taking a sip of his beer. 

“No way, man, for real?” Dutch perked up, finally interested in the conversation. “You still in?” 

“Nah, I left,” Johnny hedged, and Bobby’s eyes on the side of his face were suddenly burning. “After my first four years.” 

“Why?” Bobby asked. 

He pursed his lips, like the words wanted to come out even if he stopped them, and considered lying. Being honest would be embarrassing, and then he’d have to feel Bobby’s disappointment. He might have not contacted his friends for a decade, but he had never forgotten what it felt to be in the shade of Bobby’s disappointment. 

“I didn’t like it,” he said finally. He remembered the whole debacle in a rush, like photographs that flashed through in only seconds. His superiors called it an Other Than Honorable Discharge, which wasn’t as terrible as a Dishonorable Discharge, but it was bad enough that he was lucky to escape prison time. 

He didn’t regret beating the jackass, and he didn’t really regret getting kicked out of the Air Force either. What he saw while he was there just proved to him that he wasn’t made for that kind of life. 

It had been a difficult reality to accept, especially because he still wanted to be something. He felt that ache in his bones that everyone felt – the need to be special, to do something meaningful, to create some sort of legacy. The easiest road to a legacy was hitching yourself to a group who would achieve it together. That’s what he had when he was in Cobra Kai. 

Without it, the best substitute he had was the Air Force. 

But the people he met there weren’t like his friends – they were depressed, beaten down, with no real sense of honor. At least, those were the people he’d met. They were disillusioned by the time Johnny made it through boot camp, and he was still naïve enough to think serving your country was the highest calling. 

And then he caught that officer putting a drug in a girl’s drink. 

It still rankled, almost six years later, that he had been kicked out while nothing at all happened to the officer. No, he had been beaten so bad the sympathy for him outweighed anything Johnny had to say about him, and of course, no one listened to the woman he had tried to drug. 

“Johnny,” Dutch said, snapping his fingers in front of his face and waving. “Hello, earth to Johnny.” 

He blinked, chasing away the memories that he liked to keep in a firmly closed box labeled “do not open.” “What?” he asked. 

“You know, you can go talk to Ali if you want,” Jimmy said, tilting the mouth of his beer bottle in her direction. “You don’t have to stand around here with us all night.” 

“Even though we haven’t seen you in a decade,” Bobby pointed out, and there was that almost maternal guilt again, but Dutch elbowed him in the ribs, and Bobby gave him a smile that told Johnny he didn’t really mean it. 

Suddenly, with the force of a tidal wave, he missed his friends. 

“I’m just going to go say hi,” he promised, leaving his beer behind with Jimmy. “I’ll be right back.” 

“No, you won’t,” Bobby shot back with a laugh, and then Johnny was stepping into the crowd at the back of the gym, working his way toward Ali, who was talking to someone he couldn’t quite make out yet. He considered coming back when she wasn’t occupied, but Ali was popular, and still as stunning as she had been in high school. There would never be a moment that she wouldn’t be monopolized somehow. 

She definitely dressed like someone who went (or was going to) medical school – her black dress was sensible and yet still sexy, her hair in a no-nonsense ponytail. She was still down-to-earth and yet out of everyone’s league. 

And she had a wedding ring. 

The realization didn’t pain him the way he thought it would, perhaps because it wasn’t a surprise. He caught her gaze and waved, feeling immediately stupid as he did. They had dated for two years, and the best he could do was a wave? Jesus, he was rusty. 

Ali smiled at him and waved him over, saying something quickly out of the corner of her mouth to the person she had just been talking to – Johnny could see now he was just barely shorter than he was, in a burgundy blazer that was just a little too fashionable for Johnny’s taste, hair dark and shiny and well kept. 

“Long time,” Ali said, pulling Johnny into a hug, tight and sincere and warm. He hugged her back, taking in the way she smelled – a little like her mother but still familiar, and pulled away. “You remember Daniel.” 

Oh hell. 

***

Daniel had originally planned to do literally anything else but attend his ten year high school reunion. Why would he want to relive his years in high school? There was nothing there he cared to remember – he had only spent a year there, after all, before he graduated, and in that time, he was mercilessly bullied, had a girlfriend who crashed his car and broke his heart, and wore a suit to prom that he was now so embarrassed by he couldn’t even look at the photos without cringing. 

No, there was nothing there for him. That is, until Mr. Miyagi asked him, in that innocently shrewd way of his, if he was going to attend. 

“No,” he told him, setting their tea cups into the sink to wash. 

“Why?” he’d asked. 

“You know why,” Daniel shot back, in that impatient way he always regretted when he was speaking to Mr. Miyagi, who never berated him for his harsh words, for the way words just snuck out of his mouth without his permission. 

“Make good new memory there,” Miyagi had said serenely, pulling the tea cup from Daniel’s hands and washing it himself. “Erase demons.” 

So here he was, aware that he had work early the next morning, and that the only person here he even cared to talk to was Ali, who was so painfully successful that he couldn’t even really stomach talking to her without feeling keenly all of the opportunities that had passed him by in ten years, all of the things he could have done but hadn’t because he was an impulsive kid still, even while everyone else his age was growing up, getting married, going to medical school. 

And then her gaze had shifted to someone behind him and she muttered a quick, “be nice,” and before Daniel could even ask what she meant, she was pulling Johnny Lawrence into a hug, looking tall and muscled and tanned, and just as handsome as he had in high school.

It was like seeing him in slow motion – he was reminded of comic book heroes seeing their arch nemesis and time slowing down. But Johnny’s eyes, on their way to his, were still shining and bright with the happiness of seeing Ali, and it hadn’t quite dissipated by the time he caught Daniel’s gaze. It was surreal, Johnny’s gaze on him without malice. 

And then the happiness was gone, replaced with a dull sort of shock. 

“LaRusso,” he said, his voice far rougher and more gravelly than it had been the last time they’d spoken, when Johnny had told him ‘you’re alright, LaRusso,’ when he passed him the All Valley trophy all those years ago. He was in a flannel shirt and worn jeans, somehow matching the grunge trends with the same effortlessness that he had handled the trends while they were in high school. 

“Johnny,” he answered, and he could feel Ali’s eyes on them, bouncing between them like she was watching a tennis match. “How have you been?” 

“Fine,” it wasn’t a rude answer, necessarily, but it was dismissive, and Daniel could easily map out where the conversation was going to go now. Johnny was here to talk to Ali, to reminisce with Ali, not with him. He would be summarily disregarded. 

And then Ali put a hand on each of their shoulders, and said, “Oh, give me just a second, guys, I just have to go say hello to Tracy.” 

And she was gone, pushing deeper into the crowd, tossing them a mischievous smile on her way in, and they were left alone. Daniel glared after her, pissed that she left him alone with his ex-bully, annoyed that his only friend was so damn popular after so many years. He turned back to Johnny, prepared to give him a flimsy excuse so he could leave, and found Johnny giving him a detailed once-over, from his blazer all the way down to his brown shoes. 

“What?” he asked before he could stop himself. 

“What?” Johnny shot back, his eyes jumping up to meet Daniel’s. 

“Why are you staring at me?” he asked. 

“Grow up, LaRusso,” Johnny retorted, turning his eyes to the crowd for good measure. “I was just trying to figure out if you buy your clothes at the Baby Gap.” 

“Excuse me, Kurt Cobain,” Daniel sneered. “Some of us have to dress professionally sometimes.” 

“Yeah, big day at kindergarten?” There was a smile playing at the corner of Johnny’s mouth now, but it had been so long since he’d seen it that Daniel couldn’t distinguish it from a sincere one or the same asshole smirk Johnny was prone to giving when they were in high school. 

“Jesus, you haven’t changed a bit,” he snapped, turning away to leave, Ali be damned. He didn’t have to stick around here. Mr. Miyagi was wrong. The only thing he was going to find here was more bad memories. 

“I beg to differ, Danielle,” Johnny kept up with him easily, like he was powered by spite. “Some of us got bigger and taller after high school.” 

“Well, you know what they say about men obsessed with size,” Daniel shot back. 

And then he left Johnny behind, shoving his way free of the crowd and stomping out the gym’s back door into the corridor beyond. 

***

Johnny expected the first person to find him would be Bobby. It was Bobby who was always painfully aware of his shortcomings, including his inability to follow through with anything. Bobby would know that Johnny couldn’t be trusted to come back to his friends after his conversation with Ali, not because he didn’t want to, but because he just didn’t want to talk about it with them. 

But it wasn’t Bobby who found him sitting on the edge of the makeshift stage the DJ had set up. It was Dutch, holding a new beer. 

“Where’s everyone else?” Johnny asked, taking a long swig of the beer. 

Dutch shrugged. “Reliving the glory days,” he said. “College,” he said to Johnny’s inquisitive glance. “Frat parties and dorm mishaps and all of that stuff from the movies, you know?” 

“No,” Johnny said truthfully. 

“Me neither,” Dutch replied. 

They sat that way for a while, staring at the side door of the gym, the crowd behind them forgotten, the music directed away from them. Johnny felt more at ease here than he had most of the night, sitting beside someone who understood him. They were very similar, himself and Dutch, both angry and college degree-less, staring at the loss of time in the face, while their friends were living a fulfilled life. 

“You know what I realized?” Dutch finally said, when Johnny was almost finished with his beer, the bottle sweating in his hand. “When you went to talk to Ali and came back with LaRusso?” 

“What?” Johnny asked, the word short. 

“They’re a lot alike,” Dutch mused. 

Johnny almost choked on the last gulp of his beer. “What?” 

“You liked Ali because she got up at the movie theatre and bitched you out because I was throwing Milk Duds and stuff, right?” Dutch said, and he was staring off into the distance, like the scene was replaying itself. “You called her a firecracker.” 

“Yeah…” 

“What was one of the first things Daniel LaRusso did when you met him?” 

“Stole my girl –”

“No, he punched you in the face,” Dutch laughed. “And then he kept doing it. And so did Ali.” 

“So they’re alike because they’ve both hit me?” Johnny asked. 

“No,” Dutch said, taking a drink of his beer, nearing the end of his too. “He’s just a firecracker, that’s all.” 

***

“I cannot believe it took you both less than thirty seconds to insult each other,” Ali said, but she was still almost smiling, a glass of wine in her hand. She took a seat on the bench beside Daniel, who was looking out to the courtyard, where they used to play soccer after school. 

“Some things never change,” Daniel mused. “You showed a lot of misplaced faith, leaving us alone.” 

“I thought you two might finally grow up,” she said, but there was a laugh in her voice, and while it wasn’t quite an insult, but there was a reprimand in it. “But you two seem determined to hate each other.” 

“He’s determined to stay a Neanderthal,” Daniel muttered. 

“I don’t think so,” Ali said softly. “I think he just doesn’t know any other way to talk to you.” 

Daniel shrugged. Truthfully, he didn’t know how else to talk to him either. There weren’t exactly any good memories to fall back on. 

“You two have a lot in common,” she continued. When Daniel didn’t speak, she sighed. “Both without a father, both deeply connected to karate and your sensei, if it hadn’t have been for me, you could have been friends.” 

“I wouldn’t trade you,” Daniel said finally. She nodded, leaning against him for a moment. 

“Me neither,” she replied. She lifted her wine glass to her lips and polished off the little bit that was lingering at the bottom. A car had pulled into the parking lot, a black sedan, shiny and polished. “That’s my husband,” she said, passing the glass to Daniel. 

“You’re leaving already?” he asked, momentarily forlorn. His one friend, leaving early. 

“I have rounds to do in the morning,” she explained. She glanced out at the car again for a moment before pulling Daniel up and into a hug. “You know, I always wondered,” she began when she pulled away. “If Johnny was jealous of you for being with me, or if he was jealous of me for being with you.” 

She left him with that statement hanging in the air, the empty wine glass forgotten on the bench, her heels clicking lightly on the concrete. 

He took the wine glass inside to the bar, knowing that if he didn’t, it would be forgotten for the foreseeable future, Ali’s words still repeating themselves in his head. On the surface, they were meaningless – Johnny hated him, had always hated him, and it was because of Ali that he did. 

And then, unbidden, his mind presented him with moments he thought he’d forgotten – Johnny’s eyes meeting his at Cobra Kai, the way his face softened before he rearranged his features into a smirk; the worried way he would look over the mat to Daniel while Kreese whispered in his ear; the tears in his eyes when he handed him the trophy; the way he clutched at Daniel’s shirt instead of pushing him away. 

He ordered a martini, ice cold, and once it was deposited into his hand, he turned on his heel and went back out the door, determined to walk alone in the darkened halls to let himself think. 

But that didn’t matter, because the moment he opened the door, he was face-to-face with Johnny again, his eyes wide at the sight of him. 

He didn’t know how they started walking together, or why, just that they didn’t speak. He wasn’t going to argue with it, knowing that if he did, the serenity would be broken. The halls were dark, the light from the cafeteria that was always on glinting off the lockers in the hallway, bouncing from locker to locker into infinity. It cast a surreal glow on everything, even the planes of Johnny’s face, looking straight ahead like he couldn’t bear to look at anything else. 

“Did you go to college?” Johnny asked finally. 

Daniel winced. “Did you?” 

“No,” Johnny said, the set of his jaw a little firmer. “Went into the Air Force.” 

“Still in?” 

“No.” 

“I spent my college money trying to start a business with Mr. Miyagi,” Daniel said. “It failed.” 

“Married?” 

Daniel laughed. “No. You?” 

“No.” 

They stopped walking, and Daniel was surprised to see that they were standing in front of the bathroom where he had turned a hose on Johnny on Halloween. They didn’t say anything, but Johnny huffed a momentary laugh before moving on. 

They walked in silence for a long time, shuffling along the halls, eyes finding old memories while their mouths refused to revisit them aloud. Daniel found himself looking back at Johnny more now, his hair longer now than it had been when they were in school, curled at the end, rugged in his adulthood where he had been almost soft in adolescence. 

“Take a picture, LaRusso,” Johnny muttered, but the words were almost gentle, not meant to be antagonistic. 

“Do you still live around here?” Daniel asked. 

Johnny balked, like the question was an insult. “Yeah, why?” 

“Do you maybe want to go get a drink sometime?” Daniel asked. “I mean, when we aren’t standing in the hallways where we used to beat each other up? Catch up for real?” 

“Why?” Johnny asked, turning to take in Daniel’s face now, his eyes barely catching the light reflected from the lockers, ice blue and penetrating. “We aren’t friends.” 

He was closer than Daniel realized, but he forced himself not to take a step back. “No,” he agreed. “But we could be.” 

“You think so?” Johnny asked, and there was a depth to the question that Daniel couldn’t identify, like he was asking him another question in disguise, looking for a particular right answer. 

“Yeah,” he said. He didn’t know if he really believed it, but Johnny’s eyes in the darkness were suddenly sad, like he didn’t believe him either, and he felt a pang in his chest that he hadn’t expected. 

“I got kicked out of the Air Force,” he said forcefully, like he was getting the words out before he ran out of nerve. “I beat a soldier,” he laughed mirthlessly, “half to death, they said, because he was going to drug a girl’s drink.” 

Daniel didn’t say anything – he didn’t know what there was to say. 

“I didn’t tell Bobby or any of them,” Johnny continued. “They’ve got college degrees and Tommy’s got a wife and kids, and I just –” he shrugged, “I work for Bobby’s dad because it’s hard to get a job anywhere after the military kicks you out.” 

“I sell used cars,” Daniel said into the lingering silence that followed. Johnny laughed, a foreign sound to Daniel’s ears that brought a smile to his lips. “Talking is the only thing I’m good at, so,” he shrugged. “I sweat through my suit every day talking people into buying cars they already need.” 

“What did you want to do?” Johnny asked, and they were walking again, blending in with the shadows of the closed classroom doors. 

“Teach karate,” Daniel said wistfully. 

They didn’t say anything after that. Karate was not a subject either of them were prepared to discuss. 

And then a door opened near the end of the hall and Daniel heard Bobby Brown’s voice. 

“Johnny wouldn’t just ditch us,” he was saying to someone behind him.

“He’s probably drinking alone somewhere,” Dutch’s voice came out of the doorway before he appeared, joining the other pair of silhouettes. “He always liked to do that when we were in high school.” 

Daniel tried not to acknowledge the disappointment he felt. This was the end of their conversation, and probably the end of the possibility of their friendship. Johnny would never entertain that idea when his friends were there. 

And then Johnny’s hand closed around his wrist and pulled him into the little awning of shadow that housed a closed classroom, pinning him to the wall, his finger over his lips. 

Shh, his face said, his eyes sparkling. 

***

He didn’t know what made him do it; he just knew that he wasn’t having a terrible time with LaRusso, and Bobby, Jimmy, and Dutch would certainly mean the end of that time. LaRusso wouldn’t stick around if Johnny was back with his friends – that would be too much like high school for them both. 

And besides, they were rather alike, he and LaRusso, both languishing under not meeting expectations of life outside of West Valley, both missing their golden years of karate. So he grabbed him by the wrist and pinned him against the wall, trusting the deep shadows to keep them hidden until his friends passed. 

He had pushed Daniel far enough against the wall that he could feel every breath he took, slightly sped up with adrenaline, probably from being grabbed suddenly, close enough that he could smell his aftershave, something that smelled a little like pine and the gin of his martini. He could see a sliver of Daniel’s face in the darkness, dimly outlined as his eyes adjusted to complete darkness. 

His eyes were on Johnny, his mouth slightly parted, but he was quiet, his wrist still wrapped by Johnny’s hand, his pulse thundering. 

“How long –”

And then Jimmy’s voice rang out again, closer this time, and Johnny released Daniel’s wrist to cover his mouth with his hand, Daniel’s eyelashes fluttering against the top of his hand indignantly. 

“Johnny,” Jimmy called. “Come on, man, if you’re going to drink, drink with us!” 

Daniel squirmed, just enough that Johnny removed his hand, and they waited, with bated breaths, for the hallway to go silent again. Johnny wondered if Daniel could feel his own heartbeat, loud in his ears. 

And then a door opened and Bobby, Jimmy, and Dutch were gone, back into the gym. 

“You could have gone with them,” Daniel said when the door creaked closed. “I wouldn’t have minded.” 

“Ready to get rid of me already?” Johnny asked, hoping that the question didn’t sound as honest as he felt. 

“Why don’t you want to be with your friends, Johnny?”

He didn’t have the time to tell Daniel the story, even if he knew he would understand. It wasn’t easy to explain the nature of guilt, and it certainly wouldn’t be easy to explain why he didn’t just spend more time with his friends if he missed them so much. 

But the truth was he was worried that he wasn’t the same person he had been when they were all friends, and once they realized that, they would leave permanently. It was easier to keep them at arm’s length, so that their leaving would hurt less. 

“You’d rather be with me?” Daniel asked, his voice soft, because Johnny still had him pinned, they hadn’t moved since Johnny had initially shoved him into hiding. 

He nodded, because it was true, he would rather be with Daniel, who understood what it felt like to come back to a place to face ghosts, who understood him even if he didn’t realize it, who was staring up at him with the same eyes that stared up at him when they were standing this close outside on the courtyard back when they were fighting. 

Daniel nodded back, an understanding, and pushed Johnny away a few steps to the other side of their hiding place, stepping easily into his space like it had been choreographed, like Mr. Miyagi had taught him the correct defense, and Johnny’s mind immediately felt threatened, like his good luck had run out and LaRusso was going to beat his ass like he deserved, and then Daniel was pulling him into a kiss that tasted like a martini and a little bit like Chapstick (was LaRusso wearing Chapstick?). 

Johnny let him lead, content to be pulled along the current, not caring where it ended or if it ended at all, relishing on Daniel’s firm hold on his shirt, a tight fist that felt like he was afraid Johnny would run if he let go. He wouldn’t, but he didn’t want to stop Daniel to tell him so. Instead, he let one of his hands settle at the base of Daniel’s neck and tilted him up, just enough to get a better angle to taste him, to meet him as an equal. Daniel’s hands in his shirt loosened, enough that Johnny pulled back, searching Daniel’s visage for clues. What were they going to do now? Pretend this never happened? Leave? Keep going? 

“Not finished,” Daniel said, pulling Johnny back. 

Good, he wanted to say, but he didn’t trust his voice, not while Daniel was yanking him forward by the front of his shirt, demanding and just as bratty as he had been ten years ago. So he allowed himself to surrender to the tide that was Daniel LaRusso, knowing he would drown, but it would be a worthy drowning. 

***

The reunion ended at midnight – Johnny only knew the time because the doors to the gym opened simultaneously, spilling the people out into the hallway and threatening his and Daniel’s oasis. 

Daniel jerked back at the sound, his chest heaving, the buttons on his shirt halfway undone (Johnny was proud of that), his hair tousled. He quickly ran his fingers through it, soothing it back down, while Johnny buttoned up his shirt. 

Daniel helped return the favor, fixing Johnny’s collar and pulling it up a little higher. “You’ve got uhh –” his fingers brushed against tender skin on Johnny’s neck, and he knew suddenly what he meant. “I think the collar will hide it,” he said unconvincingly. 

“Brat,” Johnny muttered, pressing his fingers lightly to the hickey he could feel but not see. 

“Pay me back, then,” Daniel said boldly, adjusting his jacket. 

“You still want to get drinks?” Johnny asked hesitantly. 

Daniel beamed at him, bright smile marred slightly by his kiss bruised lips. “Friday?” 

“Friday,” Johnny promised, watching his high school ghost slip into the crowd, feeling like a teenager again.


End file.
